Our Science
MorphImmune is founded on the discovery and research of the company’s Scientific Founder, Philip S. Low, PhD, the Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University. Low, the named inventor of more than 500 patents and patents pending, has created a highly specific targeting technology involving the use of a ligand-linked payload to drug previously undruggable physiological pathways.
These discoveries have led to the design of targeted drugs to reprogram specific immune cell types (macrophages, T cells, antigen presenting cells, Fc receptor expressing cells, NK cells) for treatment of malignant, CNS, infectious, autoimmune and fibrotic diseases and develop ligand-targeted chemotherapies, radiotherapies, and immunotherapies of cancer.
The human immune system is intimately involved in virtually all diseases, including cancer, microbial infections, fibrotic diseases, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. Although modulation of aberrant immune cells has been proposed for remediation of most of these diseases, methods to reprogram malfunctioning immune cells without altering healthy immune cells has been elusive until now. By designing hyper-targeted drugs that home specifically to activated immune cell types, Morphimmune has developed the ability to reprogram malfunctioning macrophages, dendritic cells, NK cells, FcγRIII cells and T cells etc. in pathologic lesions without perturbing their proper functioning counterparts in healthy tissues. This ability to selectively modulate specific immune cell types has proven to be effective in treating models of the above diseases, leading to the development of multiple highly targeted immune-modulating drugs that are currently progressing through the Morphimmune pipeline.
Anti-cancer mechanism of FA-TLR7-1A
Morphimmune develops small molecule targeting ligands for delivering immunomodulating drugs specifically to aberrant immune cells, thereby avoiding the collateral toxicity that occurs when potent modulators of the immune system distribute systemically throughout the body. For example, in the case of fibrotic diseases, the targeted reprogramming of profibrotic to antifibrotic macrophages specifically halts disease progression without causing detectable systemic toxicity. In a similar manner, selective inhibition of collagen production by myofibroblasts solely in fibrotic tissues suppresses fiber (e.g. collagen) deposition without causing harm to healthy cells. When applied to cancer, targeted delivery of immune-stimulating drugs to regulatory T cells, myeloid derived suppressor cells or tumor-associated macrophages converts an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment into a tumoricidal environment, all without altering the biology of properly functioning immune cells. In brief, Morphimmune develops targeted therapeutic agents that selectively morph a disease-promoting immune cell into a disease-suppressing immune cell, thereby remediating aberrant immune cell contributions to such important human pathologies as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, microbial infections, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, pulmonary fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.
